Thank you so much, guys, for your kind words and your support.
After having closed the fuselage I sanded the seems and rescribed the panellines. Then the question rose if the lower wing part should be added right now. I think there are three ways to deal with that area:
1. Adding the whole part. Then fuselage and lower wings are strongly connected and it might become more difficult to work on the fuselage.
2. leaving this part off until having finished the whole detailing and paintjob on the fuselage. In this case the part would have to fit the fuselage perfectly and not show any signs of missalignment.
3. Cutting the middle part, adding this to the fuselage and finishing the fuselage as a whole. Then adding both lower wings by pinning them with brassrod.
For 2. the fitting of this kit isn't good enough and for 3. I was too afraid to weaken the whole affaitr too much, so i opted nolens volens for 1: The fitting really wasn't great and I did a lot of sanding and reworking to get those components together.
After closing a fuselage I always want to check, how the finished plane would look like and if every main component fits the model. I hate bad surprises when a paintjob is finished. To add more strength to the kit I replaced the interplane struts with brass tube, where I inserted a thinner brassrod and soldered the joints. A very similar method I chose for the landing gear, I did not want to place such a heavy model on tiny plastic struts...
The upper wing and the lower wing were bent. I realized that after tryfitting the wings. I needed some time with a hairdryer and some unrepeatable words which are not for children's ears (I hate bent wings...) before both wings were straight. It seems like I had got a bad copy of the Roden kit, because the same parts in the Encore Albatros D II, that shares the plastic parts with this kit, were wonderfully straight.
Thanks to the well enginered and perfectly fitting cabane struts, the whole strut affair on the Albatros D I is pretty simple.
The fitting of the rest of the main Parts isn't bad neither.
I like the overall appearance of that kit, it really looks like an Albatros. Now it has to go on with detailing and painting the main subassemblies. Let's hope that it still looks like an Albatros after this ...
Thank you
Borsos
